1. MODERNISM AND MODERN AGE (1900-1930)

2. What is modernism? It is a global trend in culture It affected the intellectual elité (the only one who had the possibility to appreciate it in that very time) It rejected the paradigms of Victorian Age It searches a new place for the man in the world

3. Why Modernism? At the end of nineteenth century there was a global crisis of values: disruption of positivism Neither God, nor the individual consciousness could longer give meaning to man Traditional values were crumbled out by the revolutionary discoveries of that period: Romantic codes were no longer valid, they were too naives

4. Frame of Modernism Modernism would have been the response of culture to: Darwin theory of evolution Darwin theory of evolution II Industrial revolution and mass society II Industrial revolution and mass society Einstein’s relativity Einstein’s relativity Bergson’s theories on time Bergson’s theories on time Freud and Jung’s psychological studies Freud and Jung’s psychological studies Nietzsche: God is dead Nietzsche: God is dead

5. How the scenery changed Man has no longer a divine reason to inhabit the world Crisis in liberal democracy, capitalism, and sciences after First World War Shift of the point of view in physics and in the whole culture: man at the centre in an universe without centre Man is alone in a mechanical world Human reason: Unconsciousness, stream of consciousness and racial memory No valid points of references and philosophical systems What does it remains?

6. Everyone gives its response No universal valid theories: only innovation, individual search for order and impersonality were common features According to Aestheticism art was the response for art Symbolists and Imagist adopted a dry and hard style to adhere to reality, and symbols become the way to summarize meaning

7. Features Order Importance of form, content is useless Retaken of Enlightenment rationality against Romantic sentimentalism Elite referred: difficult style Eclipse of narrator and reader’s importance in giving meaning Myth and anthropology: The Golden Bough, From Ritual to Romance Neo dramatic novel

8. Main figures in Modernism T.S. Eliot: poetry, Objective correlative and quotations in the global framework of myth and anthropology (The Wasteland) E. Pound (also Imagist) W.B. Yeats J. Joyce: fiction, epiphany, interior monologue in the global framework of myth and anthropology (Ulysses) V. Woolf: novel, moment of being, form (Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse)